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Vienna & Oakton Housing Inventory Remains Low!

There are currently 148 homes for sale in Vienna and 67 homes for sale in Oakton. How does this stack up to the rest of the year?

LOW LOW LOW!

If you follow our blog regularly, you know that we track statistics for Vienna & Oakton on a weekly basis and have been reporting the stats for a few years now. In Oakton, this is the lowest housing inventory we have seen in a few months. But the real story is that the housing inventory in Vienna is at its lowest point since December of 2010 – almost two years ago!! WOW!

What does that mean?

FOR SELLERS:

1. Now is a good time to sell. Less competition is a win for you. If you’re thinking now is not a good time to sell because there are not many buyers in the market due to the upcoming holidays – you may want to rethink. There may be less buyers, but anyone who is looking at this time of year is usually much more motivated to buy. Regardless of the time of year, people change jobs, relocate, have babies, win & lose elections and more. Savvy sellers take advantage of that.

2. If you are already on the market, and you’ve been on the market for more than 60 days, something is wrong and most likely you are overpriced. Why do we say this? Well, so far this year – 1,056 homes in Vienna & Oakton have gone under contract. The average days on market for those homes was 59 days. Pricing is not the only reason homes don’t sell. Other reasons may include staging, a pet issue, cigarette smell or an access issue (angry tenant or appointment only for example). But the majority of the time, it’s a price issue. Things like location, school district, layout, etc cannot be changed and can only be addressed by price. At a certain price, most objections go away. So if your home has been on the market for a long time – most of the time the way to address it is to reduce your price. After all, statistics show the longer a home is on the market, the lower it sells for – so why wait?!

3. If you are thinking of selling in 2013, NOW is the time to prep. Schedule an appointment with your Realtor BEFORE Thanksgiving. Find out what you do, and more importantly what you do NOT, need to do to get ready to sell next year. Don’t spend money on the wrong things. And if there are things you need to do, do them before next year so that you can enter the market early BEFORE inventory jumps up and you have tons of competition. As an example, in Vienna this year – inventory jumped 13% from the first week of February to the first week of March, then another 5% in April, and another 14% in May! Why not be ready to sell in January instead of waiting for the “Spring Market”?!

1. If you’re in the market to buy now, make sure you are working with a creative, proactive Realtor. With inventory so low, your dream home may be one that is not even on the market. Know what you want & go after it. Interest rates are historically low right now. You don’t want to wait, only to find that prices have gone up, along with interest rates – and you are now priced out of the market you wanted to be in!

2. If you will be in the market to buy in 2013 – you’d better be ready to move quickly. With inventory so low, there is likely to be pent up demand. Buyers who are ready now may not be finding what they are looking for and as soon as new inventory comes on the market, they will act fast. If you want to compete, NOW is the time to get your ducks in a row – get your loan approved, figure out what you need to do to get your current home ready to sell (if you need or want to do that before you buy), figure out how much cash you need to save between now & then, etc!